Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Happiness How To

Sonja Lyubormirsky, who is a leading researcher in the field of happiness, did a study that showed that people who complete five acts of kindness in a given day were happier than people who did not consciously try to perform acts of kindness that day. The most interesting thing, however, is that the group that did the five acts of kindness were happier not only that day, but the good feelings lasted for several days after the experiment was over.

To a good Christian this seems like a given.It's nice that research is substantiating what we already intuitively know. After all, doing acts of kindness is what the gospel is all about, but sometimes our lives get so busy and so scheduled that we need to remind ourselves of how important it is to look for ways and then minister kindnes. As we then renew our efforts to do good things for others we make them happy, but we also make ourselves happy.